58 ECONOMIC HISTORY
was preferable that textile processes should be carried on
in large airy buildings, as they were later, rather than in
crowded tenements where the same room had often to serve
as workshop and living place.
Hours of Long hours of labour were not confined to textile workers *.
'd^oZ*. The Statute of Apprentices2 (1563) laid down that " all
potions, artificers and labourers being hired for wages by the day or
week shall, betwixt the middle of the months of March and
September, be and continue at their work at or before 5 of
the clock in the morning and continue at work and not
depart until betwixt 7 and 8 of the clock at night, except it
be in the time of breakfast, dinner or drinking: the which
times at the most shall not exceed above two hours and a
half in the day, that is to say, at every drinking one-half
hour, for his dinner one hour, and for his sleep when he is
allowed to sleep—the which is from the middle of May to
the middle of August—half an hour at the most, and at every
breakfast one-half hour. And all the said artificers and
labourers between the middle of September and the middle of
March shall be and continue at their work from the spring
of the day in the morning until the night of the same day,
except it be in time afore-appointed for breakfast and dinner,
upon pain to lose and forfeit one penny for every hour's
absence, to be deducted . . . out of his wages that shall so
offend " 3. Petty assumed, for the purpose of his calculations,
that " labouring men work ten hours per diem " ; but another
writer (1700) remarked—" No country but Great Britain
can boast that after twelve hours' hard work its natives will
in the evening go to football, stool-ball, cricket, prison-base,
wrestling, cudgel-playing, or some such vehement exercise
for their recreations " 4. The hours of labour (including meal
times) varied in different occupations : we find tailors work-
ing twelve to fifteen hours, shipwrights and nailers twelve,
1 Shearmen worked twelve hours a day: Parliamentary Papers (1802-3),
vii. 115, 307.
2 Statutes, iv. part i. 416-417.
8 The journeymen tailors appealed to this Statute in 1721 when they
protested against having " to work fifteen hours per day " : Galton,
Select Documents : The Tailoring Trade, 8.
* Petty, Economic Writings, i. no ; Puckle, England's Path to Wealth
and Honour (1700), 25; Chamberlayne, Anglia Notitia (ed. 1700), 48.